Evolved, because theres such a rich history and what you see and hope for moving forward. I was talking to tim about this earlier coming in. So the print, i want to say the print is the median age is probablily early 60s. We Just Launched a new website the main demographic at thenation. Com is 25 to 34. The continuity in change, the ability to bring people in and i mean, i want subscribers who are 105 and i want readers who are 12, and we had writers who are 13 and writers who are 104. So i think thats a great span, and its complicated, because i remember tom frank, many years ago did a cover story for us, what is hip . And i got angry calls, this is years ago. Richard was sitting anyway, what do you mean . What about my Health Insurance program . [ laughter ] so we got straddled. But i take great, i take heart in bringing in a new generation and thats partly the interns, its partly the student nation program, we have 60 campus correspondents all around the country, all kinds of campus
It just fell together as i went along. I think one thing that struck me very dramatically was my decision to leave vietnam and to see how seductive war is. And i knew i didnt want to be someone who went from one war to the next and be kind of a war groupie, because i couldnt make a life. I wrote once that i wanted roots that went down to the source of water. And at the time, when i was in vietnam, i wasnt sure what that would have meant, and i was too young to be thinking about that, but when i went back to vietnam in 1989, it was the first time and i traveled with a small group from hanoi all the way through the country, and i was in saigon and did the memory walk of the places i had lived. And i realized, there was a moment when it just hit me. I thought of my daughter who was then 8. And i wanted to go home. And i miss the life that i had created. And i think that was when i really realized that i had, i had done that, that i had somehow chosen or life had chosen me. I didnt want to
Almost every single one of them saluted back. It was an incredibly moving experience, and you always have to wonder when youre talking about faces and people that you remember how it impacted the lives of those young men. I guess, among many other things, ive always wondered were they able to rebuild their lives and to have good families and decent jobs and to really have a decent life. I want to interrupt then and tell an anecdote. Im going to take one second here. I was inside the pentagon working on the morning of 9 11, and as we came to understand the people who perished inside the pentagon, there was a man, older man, civilian, worked for the department of the army. His name was max bilky. You know who max was. Max bilky died in the pentagon on 9 11. Max as a young army draftee is listed in American History as the last combat american soldier out of vietnam, and he came home and he had a good life. Thats good. By all accounts. And he died that morning. So vietnam, its just its jus
Covering battlefields, to bringing the stories of american troops fighting in faraway places into our living rooms, into the front page of our newspapers. If nothing else, that era was such a turn in journalism that i probably dont have to explain to anybody in this room. And i thought that if were not all totally familiar with these womens backgrounds, we would just start by going down the line and have all of you briefly tell us how you came to be in vietnam. Its a far away place a long time ago. Lets just go down the line for a few minutes here. How did you get there . I got there it seems hard to believe, but someone in our day, like barbara, would be a pentagon correspondent. We reported on things like parties and gardening and cooking. We never really made the news because womens lives were so confined that we had our section, but the stories of women werent even news because their lives were tiny and circumscribed, so i got very bored at my job. I was reading papers all the time
But nothing, nothing, approaches what these women have done and what so many journalists, regardless of gender, i think you would all agree, men and women, did in opening the way to covering battlefields, to bringing the stories of american troops fighting in faraway places into our living rooms, into the front page of our newspapers. If nothing else, that era was such a turn in journalism that i probably dont have to explain to anybody in this room. And i thought that if were not all totally familiar with these womens backgrounds, we would just start by going down the line and have all of you briefly tell us how you came to be in vietnam. Its a far away place a long time ago. Lets just go down the line for a few minutes here. How did you get there . I got there it seems hard to believe, but someone in our day, like barbara, would be a pentagon correspondent. We reported on things like parties and gardening and cooking. We never really made the news because womens lives were so confine